The Devil's Casino by Vicky Ward Read Free Book Online Page A

firm’s history referred to the period before his arrival as a chaotic, unenlightened time: “B.C.—Before Chris.”

Chapter 4

The “Take-Under”

The biggest and most fundamental change on Wall Street in
    my career has been the migration of private and public ownership
    to a place where private partnerships and publicly owned
    firms determine their own capital, and where, to quote Vikram
    Pandit, “the traders play with the house’s money.”

    —Joseph R. Perella, chairman and CEO , Perella Weinberg Partners

P eregrine “Perry” Moncreiffe, the younger son of Sir Rupert Iain Kay Moncreiffe of that Ilk, 11th Baronet, joined Lehman’s fixed income division in 1982. A tall, Scottish aristocrat (and Oxford rower), Moncreiffe was an affable, affluent anomaly on the New York trading floor. But he was also smart, extremely low -key, and charming.
    He had been attracted to Lehman because of Lew Glucksman’s lack of pretension, which he considered a blast of fresh air in the stuffy confines of Wall Street. “I thought, ‘ This is the first guy I like because he’s a no-nonsense trader,’” says Moncreiffe. “There were no airs and graces with Lew, but he was so intelligent—like an old Russian general. He was always there working in his shirtsleeves, his tie loosened and collar open. When I first had lunch with him, we talked about Marx, and I thought, ‘
This
gentleman I can work for.’”
    When Moncreiffe met with Pettit and Fuld for his interview, he told them, “Lew is fantastic!” and, imitating Glucksman’s slovenly manner, took a piece of Brie from the welcoming spread and put it on his tie. “I really like him, because he’s not smooth,” he said. “But he’s able to lead a large trading organization, so he has got to be good at what he does.”
    Like Pettit, Moncreiffe rose swiftly—though he clashed with Fuld. “When you are a trader, and working for someone else who’s a trader, you are always going to come up against a different point of view,” says Moncreiffe. “Dick had good instincts and usually knew when to run for the hills when things were going wrong. He also had the requisite toughness to run a trading operation. We didn’t always see eye to eye. I used to tell him that in trading there’s many ways to skin the cat. I’ m not sure that he agreed with me.”
    But Fuld and the other partners recognized Moncreiffe’s talent, and before long he was put in charge of trading the money markets side in London. One morning, he sold the entire London certificates of deposit position because he saw the market trading badly. “I remember the shock of colleagues,” he says. “They asked: ‘Why didn’t you get Dick’s permission?’ I replied, ‘What’s the point? By the time he wakes up it will be too late.’ I was right. But their reaction showed the fear he inspired.”
    In fact Fuld was impressed by that move and Moncreiffe was brought to New York to manage money markets and U.S. Treasury trading. That’s when the Scotsman’s relationship with Pettit was cemented.
    “When it came to management decisions, Dick listened to Chris, who was never afraid to speak his mind. Dick respected Chris. It made them a good team,” Moncreiffe says. The Scot became great friends with Pettit, whom he regarded as “such an inspiring person. Chris and I got along really well together. And I think Chris was all ready to dislike me. I think he thought, ‘Oh no! Perry’s going to be another one of these single-smartest-guy types.’ Chris had a thing against a ‘single smartest guy, ‘ because I think there was a tendency on the part of Lehman—maybe Dick and some other senior colleagues—to sort of say about new hires, ‘ Ah, this is the single smartest guy,’ and then you’d find out they had feet of clay.”
    The two men found a lot to talk about, including Vietnam and Scottish and military history. One of Pettit’s historical heroes was the Scottish independence warrior King